Finding Joy
by ancarett
Summary: It's Christmas time but Clark's alone on the farm until Lois needs a hero. But will helping her around turn not only the holiday but their relationship around? Written for the DI 2007 Ficstravaganza.


Finding Joy

Clark only thought the farm was quiet. But the property, with horses placidly munching on hay and cats purring in warm corners, was positively noisy compared to the Kent house. As he'd been out most of the day, doing chores the slow, the normal way, the house was dark and empty.

No Lana. She'd left when he'd broken free from his icy prison in the Fortress of Solitude and she'd learned that the only Clark who said he loved her was the one with fractures all over his face.

No Mom. She was busy at a party caucus meeting, trying desperately to get it all done with so she could enjoy a real Christmas break at home.

No Kara. Clark still hadn't found her, despite desperate searches that had taken him across more than one continent.

No Lois or Chloe. That went without saying, now that the cousins were both busy at _The Planet_.

Just Clark. Who wasn't, despite all the excitement of the last few months, all that ready for a quiet Christmas.

But you don't get to choose your destiny. That, Clark thought bitterly, could be another one of Jor-El's maddening taglines. Only Clark's destiny, in the here and now, was to be all alone, two days before Christmas.

Before he could get too worked up about that, his super-hearing picked up the sound of a car racing down towards the farmstead. Squinting, he opened the front door and peered out towards the racing car: Lois' car.

As it squealed to a stop beside the farmhouse, Clark was already making his way down the steps. "What's wrong, Lois?" he automatically asked as he saw her distressed expression.

"Is your mom around?" Lois said, trying to look over his shoulder towards the house.

Clark shook his head. "No, she's still in Washington until tomorrow morning."

"Damn," Lois cursed, and turned back to the car. Clark could see the signs of tears on her cheeks and wondered what had caused Lois Lane to fall apart that his mom could fix.

"Wait," he said helplessly, "what's the matter?"

Lois shot Clark an incredulous look. "You don't know? You really don't know?"

"Honest, Lois, I don't have a clue what's the matter except that something obviously is," Clark said, watching her stand wearily by her car.

"Don't tell me, Smallville, you've been out all day baling hay?" Lois asked.

Clark stifled a chuckle. "It's not exactly the season for that but I have been doing chores since early this morning. Why? What'd I miss?"

Lois hunched her shoulders and wavered a little in place. Clark could see dark circles of exhaustion under her eyes. "It's all over the networks. Lucy, she's involved in some drug smuggling group or whatever, down in Central America. Got herself kidnapped and they're threatening to execute her and some other American hostages on live TV if the U.S. government doesn't withdraw its aid to the authorities in the region."

Clark whistled soundlessly. "I'm sorry, Lois. I had no idea."

"Obviously, Smallville," she said. "Look, if your mom isn't here, I need to get going. I got the call last night that there was something going on with Lucy. The General's on maneuvers somewhere, they won't tell me, but maybe we can find him and get the army going on things. Something. Anything!"

Lois reached for the car handle but missed it, almost ending up chin-first in the roof of her car. Clark stepped forward and restrained her before she tried again. "Lois, you're in no shape to drive. When's the last time you slept or ate?"

Lois struggled against Clark's grip before slumping against the side of the car. "I don't know, sometime the day before yesterday. I'd pulled an all-nighter investigating a story about some fraudulent charities. Then, as her listed next of kin, I got the call from the embassy about Lucy being held hostage."

Lois wiped at her eyes, then glared at Clark, daring him to suggest that they were tears or a sign of weakness. "Okay, maybe you're right. I'm not in any shape to drive right now but somebody's got to do something about Lucy, before she gets killed."

Clark sighed, "Come on inside. I'll try calling my mom's office. Somebody there ought to be able to get things going."

Lois grimaced but followed Clark back into the house. After hanging up her coat and shedding her boots, she slumped on the couch and thumbed the remote. Soon the news channel was blaring and Clark could hear worry in the announcer's voice as they flashed blurry pictures of Lucy and three other Americans being held at gunpoint. A map indicated the hostages' suspected location in a mountainous region of the country and the voiceover indicated that the extremists were threatening to start shooting hostages within the next few hours.

Lois alternated between staring with dread at the television and looking over at Clark who was on the phone with one of the Senator's assistants, explaining Martha's interest in the Lane family. He nodded in understanding as he ended the call, and then looked up to see Lois.

"They're working on it," he said, holding up one hand as Lois rose in frustration. "No, really! She's going to call the State Department and start pulling some strings to see what's going on."

Lois groaned. "But don't you see, Clark? That's just going to take too long. We're talking about minutes, not hours, to save Lucy's life."

She dropped back onto the couch and held her head in her hands. "And here I am, useless, while my sister's in danger. It's going to take a miracle to get her out of this."

Inwardly, Clark couldn't help but agree. From what the announcer was saying, this was a dangerous group who'd executed hostages before. And given the relative weakness of the local authorities, they couldn't count on effective aid arriving before Lucy was targeted. But Lois was obviously in no state to handle this. Clark stepped over and crouched down in front of her.

"Look, Mom's staff is on the job, but why don't I take a photo of Lucy to her local constituency office and fax that off to them. You should stay here in case they call."

Lois smiled tiredly. "Thanks, Smallville, don't think I know that you're doing this to keep me off the roads, but I owe you."

He shrugged helplessly. "Family is family, Lois. If I heard something about where Kara was and that she was in trouble, I know you'd move heaven and earth to help. I'm only trying to do what you'd do for us."

Clark took the photo of Lucy that Lois dug out of her purse and shrugged into his jacket while Lois curled up on the couch, her cell laid out in front of her. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

Lois yawned widely. "I know. Thanks again."

He waved and then was out the door. As soon as he was out of sight of the farmhouse, Clark put on the superspeed and was soon in Smallville, opening the backdoor to his mother's darkened constituency office. He fired up one computer, wishing that Chloe was around instead of being busy, covering a story in Gotham. Still, Clark was quickly able to call up mapping sites displaying roughly where the hostage-taking happened. Better yet, he spotted a rail line nearby and tracked that quickly back through Mexico, north of the border and. . . .

In a flash, Clark was off, running alongside the rails deep into the jungles of Central America. If it'd take a miracle to save Lucy Lane, he'd do his best to provide one.

In a short while, he'd reached a small town where the newcasts had reported the last sighting of the hostages. Staying clear of the town, Clark skulked in the heavy undergrowth, spotting a number of official vehicles manned by nervous officers who kept turning around to look up the nearby mountain road. Swiftly, he made his way up the forested hillside and, with occasional pauses to let his super-hearing guide him, was eventually stretched out along a rocky overhang.

Lucy was easy to spot, kneeling on the ground in the midst of the clearing with another woman holding a pistol to her head. Three other hostages lay, face-first, and cuffed on the ground while an angry man spilled out rapid-fire Spanish over an antiquated radio. Negotiations, it seemed, were breaking down.

Clark swept the few buildings with his x-ray vision: all were unoccupied but littered with the detritus of their camp: food, bedding, more weapons and other supplies. One nervous extremist operated the video camera while two more kept watch over the cuffed hostages. Lucy's face was bowed, but Clark could see the muscles in her arm shake with the effort of keeping her hands on her head. When they trembled too much, the radio-speaker stepped forward and slapped her across the face before going back to his fruitless conversation with the authorities.

Clark suspected the local police were stalling, hoping to keep the hostages, or at least some of them, alive until a rescue effort could be launched. He bent his ear towards the town back down the mountainside: a revving of engines suggested that the long-delayed rescue was about to take place but, given the small numbers of officers and increasingly frustrated gestures made by the speaker, he didn't think Lucy was going to make it.

With a wrench, the pacing man flicked the radio off and turned to the others. He nodded towards the camera man who stepped closer to Lucy and her captor. The woman with the gun pulled a balaclava over her face with her free hand and began to move the heavy pistol into position.

Clark knew he had to act, now. He narrowed his gaze on the figures below and a red beam shot out from his eyes, touching the barrel of the pistol. With a loud shriek, the woman tossed the melting mass of metal aside. Before the other gunmen could act, Clark did the same to their weapons and took advantage of their confusion to race in, disarm and immobilize all of the extremists. Lucy was dazedly rising to her feet when the first of the police vehicles roared into sight and Clark was long gone. He paused long enough to ascertain that the police had matters in hand before racing back northwards along the rail lines back to Smallville, back home.

Clark stepped into the farmhouse and found it quite different: a sleeping Lois lay slumped on the couch, each even breath filling him with calm satisfaction. The muted television was trumpeting "Breaking News" that seemed to have something to do with the hostage release.

Clark smiled and reached over to gentle waken Lois. But she started violently at his touch. "Wha?" she said muzzily, "Lucy? Wazzup?"

As she blinked herself into consciousness, Clark grabbed the remote and let the television do the talking. Lois turned at the announcer's voice and seemed to drink in all the words of reassurance with overwhelming relief. When the names and pictures of the four "mysteriously released" hostages were displayed, Lucy's among them, she crowed in disbelief then jumped up from the couch, almost falling into Clark's arms.

"She's okay! She's okay!" Lois said joyfully and hugged Clark. He grinned down at her as she bounced on the balls of her feet in relief, alternating between looking back over her shoulder at the reassuring news and back at her friend. "I can't believe it," she said, with an incandescent smile.

Before he knew what was happening, Lois impulsively bounced forward and kissed Clark square on the lips. And that's when it all went wrong. Or right.

Clark hadn't meant to return her kiss, but his mouth had been half-open, ready to suggest that he get them something to eat from the kitchen. And Lois's lips had been warm and soft against his own. And was it really too bad if his mind shot back to the kisses they'd shared almost a year ago?

Some sort of awareness flashed in her eyes which opened wildly then closed in front of Clark's dazed stare. Two slim hands came up to frame his face and the kiss continued until it was Clark who closed his eyes and lost all track of time.

"Smallville," Lois said urgently some time later, when she somehow managed to pull herself away from the kiss, "you and Lana I are /I broken up, aren't you?"

Clark opened his eyes and looked down at Lois with a frown. "And you and Grant?"

"History," Lois said decisively. "Which is what we'll rehash at some point when we talk about that encounter with "Green Arrow" in the alley."

Before Clark could say a word in his defense, Lois had fisted her hands in his jacket (with only a scrunch of her nose at the unexpected muck and dirtiness she found there) and drawn him close for another kiss. Then she was pushing him backwards. When he realized her goal was the stairs, and his bedroom, Clark swept Lois off her feet and carried her up to his bedroom.

Deep inside himself, Clark knew they really ought to take things slow or not at all. But doing that would be to deny the rightness that he felt at their kisses. As he set Lois on her feet and shut the door behind them, he grinned as she began shoving his jacket off of him.

"I should make you take a shower before this goes any farther," she mock-grumbled. "How do you get so messy, anyway? You're like a little kid!"

Clark chuckled as he pulled the t-shirt over his head but any response he might have made was hushed by her eager lips upon his. Together, they fell back on his bed, Lois straddling his torso. Somehow she'd shed her shoes and sweater and the warmth of her body pressed against his own was entirely distracting, especially when she was moving across his torso with her hair falling forward across his body, trailing kisses along his chin and down his neck. . . .

"Hey," he protested as she began to unbuckle his belt.

Lois lifted her head enough to cock one eyebrow. "What, you think this can be managed without shedding a few more layers?"

"No," Clark chuckled, "it's just, well, take it slow."

Lois grinned in a way that Clark found more than a bit exciting. "Make me," she offered, and began to move her hands back down south.

So Clark flipped her over on her back and imprisoned her hands on either side of her head. "Ooo," she said with a mock swoon colouring her voice. "I always knew that farm work was good for something." Lois bit her lip and arched her hips up against his, rocking against the hardening length imprisoned there, attempting to break his control. One long leg wrapped itself over his backside and her foot moved seductively down the length of his leg.

Clark fought to ignore the urge that demanded he rip off all their clothes, right this instant, and lowered himself ever so slowly so that he could nuzzle along the curve of Lois's neck. She groaned and writhed as he worked a line of kisses along to her earlobe, gently pulling on that delicate bit of flesh with his teeth. "God, Clark," she murmured and fought languidly against his hold.

Clark let one arm free and he used his own liberated hand to pull her slacks down from her hips. Lois twisted underneath him to kick them off towards the foot of the bed while Clark shoved his own pants down and away. That was all the separation that they could manage, however, before they fell back into each other.

Clark reached hesitantly for one red bra strap. Lois reached up between them and slipped the catch between her breasts. The fabric fell away from her body and he groaned as her unfettered nipples tempted him to lip at them delicately, tonguing each one in turn while she twisted beneath him.

With a surprisingly strong shove, Lois rolled him back over so that he lay beneath her. "You're not playing fair, Smallville," she chided. Lois was breathing fast enough that the rise and fall of her breasts distracted him entirely as she disposed of her satin tap pants and then turned her attention to his briefs.

Clark thought one last time about protesting. They should stop this before it went too far, heck, it had already gone too far. There was so much that Lois didn't know, the one remaining rational part of his brain reminded him, but then she reached down between them to stroke her hand along the hardened length of his penis and all pretense at rationality disappeared.

He was seeing stars behind his closed eyelids as Lois fondled him firmly and knew that he would climax too quickly if he didn't stop her somehow. So he reached his hands up to lift her by the waist. Lois gasped as he lifted her up effortlessly and carefully positioned her over him. With a lascivious smile, she twisted herself against the sensitive tip of his penis and Clark groaned, his arms shaking. "Lois, don't," he begged.

"Don't what?" she said, teasingly, but he could hear the tension in her own voice. Just as he was about to go out of his mind, he felt her lower herself onto him and then lean slightly forward. His hips jerked up and forward, quickly finding a rhythm that Lois matched. His eyes flew open as he heard her pant lightly on each upstroke, and he saw her eyes glaze over with pleasure. The farmhouse was anything but silent now, Clark thought, at least this room, which was filled with life and passion and connection, a connection which drew him tantalizingly onwards.

"Clark," Lois moaned. Her eyes opened and their gazes matched as Lois began to shudder helplessly. Clark felt her muscles clench against him and rocked that little bit closer, twisting her hips above him, while she melted into an orgasm that, as soon as it began, touched off his own.

In a few minutes, maybe longer, they both came back to awareness, curled up against each other atop a rumpled mess of linens. Lois was wrapped half way around Clark with her head pillowed into the curve of his neck.

"Wow," was all Clark could manage as his heart finally began to settle back into a normal pace. He pulled the comforter over so it was covering their cooling bodies, worried that Lois might take a chill.

Purring contentedly, Lois raised her head enough to meet his gaze. "That would be an understatement," she said, then dropped a kiss on his lips before laying back down against him, one hand lazily trailing along the muscled line of his chest.

Clark thought about saying something more but, right now wasn't the time, he thought. He cradled Lois in his arms and watched the sunlight drop lower and lower in the room. Soon it would be dusk and they'd have to be getting up, rejoining the real world. Lois would be waiting to hear from Lucy in person, he knew. And his mother would be hoping to make it home from her meeting in time for Christmas.

But for now, Clark was content to let the joy of the moment fill his heart and his holiday. As Lois sighed contentedly and snuggled against him, he knew she felt the same way.

THE END


End file.
